My son and I will be attending Gencon this year for the first time.  We are coming from Colorado and the trip is his High School graduation present.  We've prepared our wishlists and are ready to press the button at 10:00 MT on Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, his HS graduation ceremony is also Sunday morning and we'll need to leave the house by about 10:30 MT to get there on time.  That gives us 30 minutes from when we submit our wishlist until we cart our events and pay for them.  I can bring my phone to the ceremonies and do some things there if I have to.

So my question is, how quickly are things processed after the events wishlists are submitted?  Is it pretty much instantaneous, or should I expect to have to wait an hour or so before I know if I got anything?

Thanks in advance.

Dave

The bad news is that unless you are lucky it will probably be longer than 30 minutes until your list is processed. The good news is that your events will stay in your cart for two hours before they are released back to the masses. So you don’t need to be watching for the exact moment they are processed.

I always press within microseconds of start - and I don't think I've ever gotten through the first round in less than 30 minutes.  It really depends on how lucky you are.

If memory serves, it takes about 45 minutes for the initial rush to complete, but they unlock as they go, so not everybody waits the full 45 minutes.  You'll be able to check out as soon as the list is processed, which could be as soon as a minute or two after you push the button if the timing is in your favor.

As was mentioned though, you cart stays full for two hours, so if you don't get your list until, say, 10:45, you have until 12:45 to check out.  If you assume that Murphy's Law states your cart will fill exactly 5 seconds after you walk out the door, then plan to check out at any point within two hours after that (minus some wiggle room for "Internet time") and you should be okay.

Has taken me longer than 45 minutes in the past to get initial processing of wishlist.

Hopefully I get early in the queue this year instead of say 6,000 in the queue.

If you're going to take your phone to keep up with your position, then do everything from your phone, including the initial submission.  Every year people post horror stories about how doing anything else on their computer while waiting in the queue somehow kicked them out and reset their position to the bottom.  I can't verify this, but switching devices could be risky.  Better to do everything from the phone and don't close the browser window while you're in the queue.

Me and my son are also new attendees and I have a question along these same lines...if I want to do, say, an escape room and put several different times on my wishlist and more than one of them ends up in my cart, can I delete the extra ones from my cart?
I know it is probably wishful thinking, but I have no idea what the strategy might be to ensure that we get to do a couple of these amazing things. (A dungeon run and an escape room would be awesome.)

Yes, once your wish list is processed, you have 2 hours to check out. This means that you can delete things (but not add things) from your cart.

If a popular event is being held multiple times over the weekend, should I add all of them to my wishlist to be sure at least one gets in my cart?

Once my wishlist is done processing, will I have the chance to remove events from my cart before paying?

Will I get an error if I try to buy tickets for the same event at different times?

Once the wishlist is processed, you will get the chance to remove anything you don't want to buy - this is useful if you end up getting more of an event than you expected.

The only thing the system seems to care about is overlapping events - If you want to play multiple sessions of the same event, that's your business. :)

I have 2 TD events in my cart 20 times each, so we hopefully get the times my group wants this year.  There’s no problem with adding the same event as many times as you want, and you can even buy tickets to them.  A lot of hardcore TD players do exactly that.  They’ll do a run of a module at normal mode and help some new players, then run the same module on nightmare mode with a group of friends.

The catch is that if you get more than one, you might not get another event that you want if it overlaps with one of the "extra" events that you end up removing.

It takes ~30 mins. for the PayPal and Venmo bribes to the GenCon admins to clear; then all the peasants may participate.  (JUST KIDDING!)

~eBay username: FiveHundredDollarTrueDungeonTixAvailable

Gen Con Events asked me to post this video link to Jordan and Derek discussing events and the wishlist, up-loaded this past Tuesday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xpHRydoF9E

Roderick Robertson
Forum Coordinator 
Gen Con, LLC. 

Sorry if this is obvious, but...

One thing to bear in mind when putting lots of things in your wishlist is that you will not be awarded things that overlap.  If #3 on your list runs from 2-4 on Friday and #6 on your list runs from 3-5 on Friday, you won't get both even if both are available when your list processes.  You'd only get #3 in this example.

just want to chime in to say that this is a great graduation present, kudos also to the other dad coming with his son

my first gencon was 2 years ago with my then 19 year old son and it is nearly overwhelmingly cool to share with a son

you're going to have a blast even if you don't get any events you are putting in your wishlist